This week Brain Solis held two lectures in Stockholm. First I attended an online lecture at Disruptivemedia.se and later the same day I saw him live at a lecture arranged by Wenderfalck.
I think too many “experts” are talking about social media as an intellectual playground, not as an opportunity to build meaningful relations. Brian is not one of them; he connects social media with business results. In my opinion Twitter has become more of an toy than a meaningful tool for business. This is not alright to say, because Twitter is the new Second Life and Facebook (the hype is so strong that criticism is not allowed to be told). Brian explained this excellently, he said that Twitter is only here for a while and will sooner or later be replaced by something else (but the social relations will still be there). Twitter is only a technical solution for being social. In other words our loyalty is based on the best provider to build relationships. In Sweden “Twittering” have become a shortcut to say that you “understand” social media. Brian explained that in the States the hype is even higher. So high that big corporations are employing young students to Twitter on their behalf because the executives “believe” that young people are the only ones who understands Twitter. But students don’t know the business they are Twittering about. Corporations do not understand how strong impact this sort of “fake” Twittering can have on the perception of their brand. But they are starting to understand the legal complexity to have an official Twitter person online (influence stock-value etc). My interpretation of his warning regarding not letting students to do this is the same as letting kids to play with guns. Twitter is fun, but it’s not a new toy for brands to shot of bad content into.

Here some of Brain Solis best points:“The listening tells you everything.”
“Social media will soon be incorporated into CRM software’s.”
“We are all judges on what you’re sharing and what you are not sharing.”
“The press release is 102 years old and it’s still useless.”
“Attention becomes the major currency in content commerce.”

There were a lot of politicians in the audile who were a bit shocked over Brian’s criticism over the Barack Obama campaign. He explained that it was totally based on monologue “vote on me” but Obama will soon developed it into dialogue with the people (to make change). In the lecture did Brian repeat the expression: At the end of the day. At the end of his lecture did we talked for a while, my impression is that he is a humble cool big thinker. He didn’t give us the traditional BS about social media with the case story of Barack Obama. Also he did not compare its viral effect with how the swine flu spreads. It was really refreshing to listen to Brian who has the guts to say what he really believes in. His lectures pointed out what and how to create relevance of social media. At the end of the day – does social media need to make profit in the corporate world.